ANALYSIS OF FLOW FIELD IN AN ARTIFICIAL BLOOD PUMP WITH CFD

One of the most difficulties in an artificial blood pump design is the complex flow field inside the pump impeller. The flow structure is very important to the pump performance and the blood characteristics. Prediction of the flow structure and separation will assist optimization of pump design to minimize hemolysis and platelet activation. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software to simulate the folw field inside the blood pump impeller was report. To redesign a centrifugal blood pump, the detail flow structure was investigated with the CFD software. The CFD simulation results showed that there were large scale separation flow and complex vortex structure inside the pump impeller passage, which might cause the pressure ratio drop and the blood trauma. Slipy inlet passage, apropriate blade location and relevant blade height were demanded in redesigning blood pumps to improve the flow performance and reduce the blood trauma.